Why not provide a dependency declaration in the activity file which can be checked when the activity is installed?  It could inform the user that a particular package or library was needed.  I understand that different distros may package the dependencies differently, but it wouldn't be so bad if the user had to identify this at registration (if not an XO running a recognizeable distribution) or when using the activity.s.o site.  Then the checker could recognize which dependency declaration to use (or could announce "this activity has dependencies but your distribution hasn't been described" -- or words to that effect. <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Luke Faraone <luke@faraone.cc> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 7:28 PM, Aleksey Lim <<a href="mailto:alsroot@member.fsf.org" target="_blank">alsroot@member.fsf.org</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> What will happen if someone download TamTam/StoryBuilder/etc, and unfortunately hasn't csound/pygame/etc installed? One possible decision: we could create meta package w/ frequently used dependencies, like csound/olpcsound, pygames etc Whats our strategy in that case for short/long period?</blockquote><div> The *ideal* method would be to use a standard packaging method long term, ie .deb (which I'm partial to) or RPM. (both of these can be converted from and to each other with alien) Currently the main objection to using "system packaging" is that they require administrative privlages to install; unfortunately, so would any other solution other than requiring that *all* sugar installs had *all* the packages in the "sugar system" (like we were able to do with the XO). That method does not scale, and it forces people to handle shared libs. If we decided to look into using debs or RPMs, we could easilly use apt-get or yum in "prefix mode", which lets non-root users install packages. Or, we could continue to use XO bundles, which have no dependancy handling what so ever. Even if we standardized on metapackages, we'd still need to either A) request that the system administrator install them, or B) make a XO bundle format for shared libs. </div></div> -- Luke Faraone <a href="http://luke.faraone.cc" target="_blank">http://luke.faraone.cc</a> _______________________________________________ Sugar-devel mailing list <a href="mailto:Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org">Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org</a> <a href="http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel" target="_blank">http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel</a> </blockquote></div> -- "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair